by Henry Lane Hull
The saga continues. In the early spring of 1984, I was teaching Russian history at a university in Huntsville, Alabama. Throughout the years I was there, I came home to the Northern Neck whenever I could; by the time I left the university, I had had made 125 round trips, 743 miles house-to-house.
The university gave semester hours on the quarter system, which was a tailspin experience. At the end of the winter quarter that year, I headed home for the spring break. Once here, when I opened the Rappahannock Record, I read Gene Rook’s valedictory column, which announced his retirement from writing “Rejoinder.”
Immediately, I decided that I would like to write a local column for the paper. I spoke with my dear friends, Ellen, whom I called Auntie, and Robert M. Lee, who both had spent their careers working at the paper. Each of them encouraged me to speak with Mr. Currell, which I did the following day, Friday.
His only two comments were, “How are you going to write a column from Alabama?” which I surmise I answered to his satisfaction, and secondly, “Have it here by Monday,” thus began “Excerpts.”
I went home, wrote the first “item” and had it to Mr. Currell early on Monday morning. The following Thursday, the first column appeared; the date was March 15, 1984, The Ides of March, an ominous day for Julius Caesar, but happily not for me.
Next week’s issue will complete 40 years of “Excerpts.” On two occasions when I was active in politics, the column was suspended for several months, but I wrote the columns, and they appeared collectively after the campaigns, thus the paper has published an item for every week over these last four decades.
As to Mr. Currell’s first concern in our initial meeting, in those primitive days before the internet, I would type the column, xerox it, and send one copy to the paper and one as backup to my good friend and longtime employee of the Record, Jean Dize.
Two years after the onset of “Excerpts,” Auntie convinced me to move home from Alabama, and I packed up, and thanks to the help of the late Wes Jones, I arrived home for good. As I traveled, the columns continued wherever I was. I wrote several from Europe, sending them in by mail. Fortuitously, they always arrived on time.
I do not think of the columns as news stories, nor myself as a reporter, but rather as being commentaries on the passing scene. In the past 40 years, only once did I “scoop” the news. That event occurred in June 1993, when I wrote an item from Chestertown, Maryland, and mailed it early in the morning, after which later in the day I proceeded to commit matrimony at an historic church on the Eastern Shore.
On March 10, 1985, slightly less than a year after the onset of the column, Robert M. Lee Jr., who had been instrumental in bringing it about, died suddenly. Reflecting on his passing, I wrote a tribute, at the conclusion of which I added “R.I.P.” That item was the first of many that I have written following the passings of individuals who have made significant contributions to the Northern Neck and Tidewater region in our time.
Last May, the 2000th “Excerpts” appeared. With one exception, I do not research people or items in order to describe them. The exception was the one I wrote on the late Pat Kellum, who worked for many serving the patrons of Lee’s Restaurant.
Pat received a diagnosis of a terminal illness. When she told me of her prognosis, I set out to learn all that I could about her and I wrote a tribute, which appeared on her last birthday, which was on a Thursday. I arranged with Cindy Pittman for me to bring the column to her early that morning, and I waited while she framed it. I took it to Pat, told her it was the only column I ever had researched, and that it would remain as such, and thus it has.
Next week will be the 40th anniversary, and for the occasion, I plan to offer a glossary of the terms I have coined or used therein over the years.
